Complaint Review: Pitney Bowes

When in office postage meters were all going digital we took a lease on a DM200.  During the lease period service was outstanding.  Even after the initial lease was up, service is pretty good.  However, just before the lease was up I started getting calls to upgrade the meter.  They tried and tried and to this day still try to get us to upgrade and go into a new lease (instead of a qtrly rental with no lease term). We did not upgrade because they no longer offer a unit where the meter detaches for refill.  The majority of our lines are digital, but the meter needs to hook into an analog phone line.  We have no such lines near where the meter is, and we do not have space to move it.  We also do not have an available port to hook the new meters into the computer system.  We need to stick with this machine.  Wireless is not an option with all the metal in our walls, we were told it may not work since one part of the device is at the analog line and the other is at the meter.  Well, the ink is sooooo very expensive more than $100.00 per carteridge, a price break is 120.00 each if you buy 3. Each one used to last approx 3 months when we were doing a high volume of mail.  I looked for more cost efficient ink and found some.  The first one lasted 3 months or better and only cost 20.00. Then the meter called for "inspection".  You need to plug it into the phone line and let it do it's thing.  I equate this with kind of system update to the software and a check that there is no tampering.  After the last "inspection" We are using all ink at a rate of two to five weeks! no matter were the ink comes from.  We also noticed the amount of times the meter performes "system maintainance" has quadrupled in frequency.  (large amounts of ink get wasted through this auto maintainance feature that cannot be turned off.)  I wholeheartedly believe that the software was modified to make the meter do the frequent mainainance to burn the ink.  At the cost of ink, most people would say there is a problem with the meter and after PB checked it out and told you 'it's antiquated and we aren't going to be maintaining them much longer and it will be hard to get parts', would wind up in a new lease with a new meter.  Unfortunately, business is way down and are mailing a good 85% less than ever.  Still the meter blows through ink in 5 weeks from 12!???  This has to be a scam.  And by the way when they try to get you into a new machine and tell you that they will nologer service the old one and all the mumbo jumo they can think of to say, if you tell them well we are eather staying with this one or going to a competitor of PB's, your head will spin with how fast they recant all the 'you can't continue to use that equipment' talk and tell you it's fine to keep using it.